Former Madison Police Chief David Couper in his office with posters of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, in Wisconsin. When protests take a turn like this we naturally wonder … why? We learned a lot about the dogs, which have names like Drogo, Missile, Vader, Storm and Rambo. I'm sorry. “What a lot of people took from that in policing is, we can’t trust these people. A series on the damage police dogs inflict on Americans, published in collaboration with AL.com, IndyStar and the Invisible Institute. The police department was so dysfunctional that the city took the unprecedented step of disbanding the force and reconstituting a whole new agency from scratch. Was this preventable? “When you have overly aggressive crowds you have to address them,” said Anthony Batts, who led departments in Long Beach and Oakland, California, as well as Baltimore. Take the Atlanta Police Department as an example. Reached by text, Batts said that certain events, like fires and police retreats, “inspire” crowds. Even a single protest isn’t really a single protest. Since 2014, The Marshall Project has been curating some of the best criminal justice reporting from around the web. Some not. By The Marshall Project News December 21 The National Guard Is Using Force on Prisoners After Little Training Ohio guard members patrolling inside prisons trained for a fraction of the 5 weeks required of correction officers. De-escalation strategies definitely exist. He had joined the second day of protests in this city over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died after a police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes while bystanders filmed. It feels like the beginning of the end.” The end of what? Either way, the messages are delivered in a calm, measured voice. Batts was police commissioner during the violent clashes between police and protesters that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore police custody. Even if the evidence is, “don’t perform this surgery in that way or someone could die,” it can still take 20 years for the new technique to be widely adopted. Protesters and police have been hurt. “That's the primal response,” he said. And already police unions across America are pushing back hard on new legislation that promises reform. The “negotiated management” model of protest policing called for officers to meet with protesters in advance to plan events together to specify the times, locations and activities that would happen, even when that included mass arrests. Maguire compared it to trying to change hospital procedures by using evidence-based medicine. It’s also just hard to change police culture. "An Unbelievable Story of Rape" is a 2015 article about a series of rapes in the American states of Washington and Colorado that occurred between 2008 and 2011, and the subsequent police investigations. He said from his point of view, methods like the Madison model make crowds “go ballistic.” He said he was speaking generally, and that he does not advocate a harsh police approach to the ongoing demonstrations. “The adrenaline starts to pump, the temperature in the room is rising, and you want to go one step higher. Some K-9s even have their own adorable Instagram accounts. Watching a peaceful protest turn into something much less palatable is hard. Police unleashed pepper spray, projectiles and tear gas. His strategy for dealing with protesters was to send officers out to talk with demonstrators, engage, ask them why protests are made, listen to their concerns and, above all, empathize. We obtained dog-bite data from police departments around the country, including the agencies in the 20 largest U.S. cities. She found that one key element is transparent communication—something Nassauer said helps increase trust and diffuse potentially tense moments. We watched dozens of videos of dog bites, from police body cameras and bystanders’ cell phones. “But this feels emotional. Even when researchers get a good vantage point to observe protests in the real world—for example, by embedding within a crowd—the data that comes out is more descriptive and narrative as opposed to quantitative. The Marshall Project … Does anyone know how to stop it from happening? Video editing by Celina Fang and Jovelle Tamayo. Still, if researchers know it’s not a good idea for police to use force against protests and demonstrations, and that information has been available for decades, why do we still see situations like this happening all over the country? The Marshall Project: How the police shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her own home How the police shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her own home. The Problems With Policing the Police. The cops responsible for Taylor’s death in Louisville, Kentucky, last March were not wearing body cameras so there is no visual record of what happened. “I’m nonviolent,” he said. And different police tactics.” In Baltimore on Saturday, for example, a police lieutenant mollified a crowd by reading out loud the names of victims of police brutality, while protesters outside City Hall threw bottles at police in riot gear and police used tear gas on the crowd, WBFF-TV reported. Some kinds of protests are highly organized with top-down plans that are months in the making. Researchers have spent 50 years studying the way crowds of protesters and crowds of police behave—and what happens when the two interact. “There’s this failed mindset of ‘if we show force, immediately we will deter criminal activity or unruly activity’ and show me where that has worked,” said Scott Thomson, the former chief of police in Camden, New Jersey. But police dogs are weapons. Dogs have served as instruments of violence in incidents dating back to the days of slavery, and as recently as the Black Lives Matter protests. Harris said he had used his backpack as a shield and maneuvered close enough to take the baton of the officer who shot him. But if we know that (and have known that for decades), why are police still doing it? Previous Marshall Project investigations into cases of attempted police reform in cities like Memphis and Chicago found that cutting law enforcement budgets did not reduce police violence or produce healthier relationships with the neighborhoods they patrol. “I have good relationships with police and I’ve been working with them for 25 years, and I’ve never experienced pushback like I do on this,” Maguire said. Hidden in Bill Passed Over Trump’s Veto: Limits on Police Militarization themarshallproject.org - Eli Hager. The Marshall Project receives funding from the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations and other organizations that support efforts to … Nonprofit journalism about criminal justice, A nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system, This article was published in partnership with. Joanne Archambault, who leads the nonprofit End … We need to be smarter and overwhelm them to nip these things in the bud,” he said. One thing they will tell you is that when the police respond by escalating force—wearing riot gear from the start, or using tear gas on protesters—it doesn’t work. It was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a … This is how a democracy is policed. That goes double, he said, if the topic of the protest is police brutality. For example, the Kerner Commission, which was formed in 1967 to specifically investigate urban riots, found that police action was pivotal in starting half of the 24 riots the commission studied in detail. De-escalation, of course, does not guarantee that a protest will remain peaceful, and when protests take an unpredictable turn, it can be challenging for police to estimate the appropriate level of force. All but hidden in the military spending bill that Congress enacted in its first override of a Trump veto is a new restriction on police … Reporting by Dana Brozost-Kelleher, Andrew Fan and Ellen Glover. Our investigation found at least 32 cases since 2010 in which police officers delayed or failed to offer emergency first aid to people who subsequently died from their injuries. A lot of this pushback from police has to do with some legitimate officer safety concerns related to de-escalation, Maguire said. But there is a general consensus.”. “There’s different dynamics. The social and political context of the time and place also affect what happens. A police officer comes into … They bite and maim. Thomson encountered this when he tried to make change in Camden. According to documents provided to The Marshall Project by Albuquerque police, of the 35 fatal shootings by police between January 2010 and April 2014, 11, … Interactions between police and protesters are, by their very nature, tough to study. “No. “You have to be in front of it. “Trying to find folks at the last minute that you can put out there in soft clothes and talk to people, frankly and in my opinion, wouldn’t work that well,” Ginger said. Here’s how, Police departments love to show off their dogs—. The Parker Creek Project is essential for the city as it fulfills two of the Mobilize Marshall goals, providing infrastructure benefits and enhance the appearance of the city. The Berlin police employs people specifically to make announcements in these situations, using different speakers, with local accents or different languages, for things like information about what police are doing, and another speaker for commands. Maguire does training for police officers and has tried, for years, to get buy-in on the idea that there could be a different way. We first talk with Eli Hager, staff writer for … It recommended that police eliminate “abrasive policing tactics” and that cities establish fair ways to address complaints against police. The police department was so dysfunctional that the city took the unprecedented step of disbanding the force and reconstituting a whole new agency from scratch. Reporting by Challen Stephens and Ashley Remkus. Anne Nassauer, a professor of sociology at Freie Universität in Berlin, has studied how the Berlin Police Department handles protests and soccer matches. “There was a time when the playbook was much more straightforward. They attack bystanders, police officers, and people suspected of petty crimes. Trump supporters storming the Capitol are waving the thin blue line flag — hailed as a sign of police solidarity — as they fight police officers. “But we make the argument that [de-escalation] makes officers more safe, by reducing violent confrontations with protesters. Store windows have been smashed. Illustrations by Ross Sneddon, Nonprofit journalism about criminal justice, A nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system, We investigated how police use dogs as weapons. A Marshall Project review of state records found that six of the 48 waiver requests came from Memphis police for non-violent crimes ranging from open container violations to reckless driving. Few ever get justice. Others, like many of the events across America this past week, are spontaneous outpourings of grief and anger. Huntington, WV – Marshall University is moving on from head football coach Doc Holliday after 11 seasons. Officers in riot gear at a demonstration on May 30 to call for justice for George Floyd, a black man who died while in custody of the Minneapolis police, in Minneapolis, Minn. often deadly policing of African Americans, the way crowds of protesters and crowds of police behave—and what happens when the two interact, three federal commissions formed between 1967 and 1970, the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, one key element is transparent communication, it can still take 20 years for the new technique to be widely adopted, tasers to force two college students out of their vehicle. “The time to make friends isn’t when you need them,” Thomson said. And he attacked five innocent victims. But what we need to know as professionals is that there are times, if we go one step higher, we are forcing them to go one step higher.”. Two passersby and a state trooper hold him to the ground. ProPublica and The Marshall Project hosted a Digg Dialog with retired San Diego Police Sgt. On Thursday night, he returned to the same spot to watch the precinct burn. “Do we know [this] in the way that you know if you put two chemicals together things explode?” said John Noakes, professor of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice at Arcadia University. Couper, the creator of the Madison Method, said, “It’s this whole attitude of, ‘We keep order because we kick ass, and it’s us against them.’ (...) We've got to root those people out and say, ‘Look, this is the job that we expect. After 2008, cities reduced police spending as the Great Recession depleted their coffers. Of course, as Gillham pointed out, negotiating and managing a protest can’t really work if the protest wasn’t organized ahead of time. The Marshall project In many cities, police officers are more likely to be white than the citizens they are sworn to protect and serve. ", James Ginger, a veteran police monitor who is now overseeing the Albuquerque Police’s settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, agreed that only this longer-term trust-building exercise works. This story was updated to include additional comments from Anthony Batts. “You have lots of mini protests happening in many places,” said Edward Maguire, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University. That, experts say, speaks to a cultural attitude that is endemic to the profession, and is hard to change with new chiefs or rules. Design and development by Elan Kiderman, Katie Park and Gabe Isman. If officers come into a situation already wearing protective body armor and face shields, that can make protesters feel uncomfortable and under attack long before there’s any kind of confrontation,” Maguire said. “When I had the opportunity to build a new police department, I was able to do in three days what would normally take me three years to do, because of work rules, because of the bureaucracy of collective bargaining agreements—there are a lot of impediments to reform,” Thomson said. Obi the police dog had thousands of Instagram followers for being "cute and derpy." Though these protests began with peaceful demonstrations outside the city’s 3rd Precinct, interactions between police and protesters had escalated. When protesters violated the negotiated terms, police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets and took away the wrong lessons, Maguire said. by Simone Weichselbaum, The Marshall Project . All three concluded that when police escalate force—using weapons, tear gas, mass arrests and other tools to make protesters do what the police want—those efforts can often go wrong, creating the very violence that force was meant to prevent. But the era of negotiated management basically fell apart after the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, when protesters blocked streets, broke windows and successfully shut down the WTO meeting and stalled trade talks. There are no national standards for police dog training, yet dogs are responsible for sending thousands of Americans to hospital emergency rooms every year. Instead, it’s become normal in the U.S. for police departments to revert to tactics that amplify tensions and provoke protesters, Maguire said, including wearing intimidating tactical gear before its use would be warranted. 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